Please find below a link to a survey concerning the upcoming 3-Event Rules Committee meeting. This is YOUR opportunity to have YOUR say about the direction our sport will take, as far as new rules, rule changes, interpretation, etc. Please complete and submit in the next 2-3 days. Let's get as much input as possible from Kentucky skiers and help guide our sport in the direction we want it to go. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2018rulessurvey

We are winding down the period for nomination for state superlatives for the Ski Year 2016-17. Final submissions must be made by October 14th. As a reminder, those awards are as follows:

Junior Skier of the Year

Skier of the Year

Member of the Year

Kentucky Water Ski Hall of Fame (not elected every year)

I received a flurry of nominations when the request went out back in August, but then the interest abruptly stopped. Some excellent nominations were received, properly done, but there are many qualified skiers and members who had exceptional years and have NOT been nominated. I can write several nominations myself, but it would be much better if these nominations came from the general membership.

Please use these last two weeks to nominate a skier/member for one ofthe superlatives awards, so our officers will have lots to pick from inNovember, and so we’ll wind up with the most qualified person for eachsuperlative!

09/07/17

Stillwater Lake 22nd Annual Labor Day Tournament

It's kind of hard to believe that we were on the verge of cancelling atournament in Kentucky due to a hurricane, but we came close. After 28straight hours of rain we were unsure when it would end, but the tournamentgot started at noon. There were only 8 skiers entered and due to high watercausing backwash and cold temperatures, few of them were able to ski totheir potential. However, the following performances were noteworthy:

Lake Jones (2017 Southern Region Champion in B2) stepped up to 36 MPH in his first tournament competing in B3, and was solidly deep into 32 off despite the conditions.Pat Coomes went deep into 28 off for the second weekend in a row.Jim Roshelli had a personal best of 4 at 34 MPH. Darryl Rickson showed his real self by running 35 off two of three rounds with a best of 3@38 off. Leon Leonard improved on his previous tourney by running his opener all three rounds, with a best of 86.5 buoys for a new M8 record, previously held by Errol Bryant at 75.5 since 2011.

Contact us:

E-mail

Phone

Name

Submit

09/04/17

Kentucky State Skiers

The KWSF Board of Directors, in conjunction with general popular opinion and request, has voted to move up the time frame for nominating and voting on state awards for the Ski Year 2017. It has been decided that it makes a lot more sense to do nominations near the end of the ski year in question, rather than waiting until the following spring/summer. This will encourage everyone to make nominations while skier performances are still fresh in mind for the past season and year.

Nominations for the four awards are now open, and will continue open through October 14, 2017. The BOD will then be in position to vote on these awards at the annual winter meeting. Recipients will be kept in confidence until the 2018 State Championships, when they will be announced (as usual) at the state tournament awards banquet.

Keep in mind that you are nominating for the year beginning immediately after Nationals/2016 and ending with performances at Nationals/2017. Performances from any late-season 2017 tournaments should NOT be considered.

Please go to our website for a complete description of each award, and how each is elected. In particular, keep the following in mind as you nominate (as dictated by our by-laws, which are also published up-to-date on the website):

Junior skiers (those skiing as 17-year-olds or younger during the 2017 ski season) may NOT be nominated for Adult Skier of the Year.

If you place a name in nomination for any award, you
MUST support that nomination with a
list of qualifications which apply to the nomination being made. (Example: Don’t use “he’s a member of the local Rotary Club” as a qualification for Adult Skier of the Year.) The more qualifications, the better!

The person nominated for an award
must be a Kentucky skier according to our by-laws (with the exception of Hall of Fame nominations). If you’re not familiar with the requirements for being considered a Kentucky skier, please review the by-laws.

Now, let’s get those nominations coming in, while it’s fresh on your mind! We’ve had a lot of great performances by state skiers this past year, and a lot of outstanding service to our organization. Don’t let these go unrecognized.

Thanks and good skiing,

Joe Burkhead

08/31/17

24th DAVID MOFITT MEMORIAL

Kentucky Lake Ski Nuts – August 25th

The 24th David Moffitt Memorial, sponsored by the Kentucky Lake ski Nuts, was held August 25th at Twin Oaks Lakes in Paducah. As we move later into the ski season, performances are expected to be at a high level, and this tournament did not disappoint. While an unusual east wind did have some impact on performances at times during the day (particularly a tail wind for jumping – ugh!), there were still numerous outstanding scores.

A tournament that was maxed out on entries/pulls was perhaps the highlight of the day. Also quite significant was the fact that over half the entries were Men/Women 1 and younger. Notable performances by Kentucky skiers included the following:

Ben Brannan, the newest Ski Nut and an import from Ohio, cleared the 35 off line length in Men 1, finishing with 1 buoy at 38 off and a new PB. By “new PB” – this was a first-ever perfect “35 off” for Ben, tournament
OR practice.

Eric Kelley, skiing in Men 4, was the only skier of the day to run 38 off, finishing with a half at 39 ½ off in Round 2.

Carl Marquess, in Men 6, had the top Tricks performance of the day at 2900 points, and one of his best scores in quite some time. He also broke 2000 points in Overall, his best NOPS score ever.

Errol Bryant had his top slalom performance of the year, running 1 @ 32 off.

Pat Coomes had a Nationals qualifying performance in overall with solid scores in all three events in the second round. Brother Mark Coomes had a nationals qualifying performance in slalom, completing 32 off in the second round.

Jackson Hawes had PB’s for the year in all three rounds of tricks, scoring duplicate scores of 2030 points in all three rounds.

The Moffitt wrapped up a relatively quiet season of tournaments at Twin Oaks Lakes – only two sanctioned tournaments in 2017. This will change dramatically in 2018, when the Ski Nuts will host the Southern Regionals, the Kentucky State Championships, and three other tournaments (two of which will be record capability).

08/17/17

2017 National Championships

San Marcos River Ranch

Martindale, Texas

The 2017 National Water Ski Championships concluded on Saturday, August 12, after a four-day run on three lakes at San Marcos River Ranch in Martindale (TX). This year’s nationals showed excellent participation, with nearly 700 skiers from across the country gathering to compete.

Thirteen Kentucky skiers participated in eight different divisions, giving our state a strong presence in the national championships. Those competing were:

Lake Jones – Boys 2 – Slalom

Austin Collins – Boys 3 – Slalom/Tricks/Jumping

Garnet Fowler – Boys 3 – Slalom/Tricks/Jumping

Kassidy Hawkins – Girls 3 – Slalom/Tricks/Jumping

Saylor Davidson – Girls 3 – Slalom/Tricks/Jumping

Leland Rouse – Men 1 – Slalom/Tricks/Jumping

Nick Roshelli – Men 1 – Slalom

Carl Marquess – Men 6 – Slalom/Tricks/Jumping

Pat Coomes – Men 6 – Slalom/Tricks/Jumping

Mark Coomes – Men 6 – Slalom

Dave Keller – Men 7 – Slalom/Tricks

Bob Harris – Men 7 – Slalom

Errol Bryant – Men 9 – Slalom/Tricks

Our state had some excellent performances across the board, and we were represented by a wide range of skiers age-wise. About the only group missing “en masse” were Women’s division skiers. With the exception of our two Girls 3 skiers, the rest of our competitors came from the male side of the fence!

That said, our most senior skiers led the way in podium positions.

Errol Bryant, skiing in Men 9, took three medals for the first time in his skiing career. Errol finished 2nd in Tricks, and added on a 3rd in Slalom and 3rd in Overall.

Dave Keller, in Men 7, brought home a silver medal in the Trick competition.

Carl Marquess, competing in Men 6, took 5th in tricks.

Lake Jones, skiing in a highly competitive Boys 2 slalom grouping, was one of only two “youngsters” from Kentucky to medal, running 1 ½ @ 35 off to take third.

Kassidy Hawkins was the only other junior to medal, running 1 ½ @ 38 off in the extremely competitive Girls 3 Slalom to finish 3rd.

This gave Kentucky a very respectable seven medals in this Nationals. “Near misses” were scored by Leland Rouse in Men 2 with 7th place finishes in both Tricks and Jumping and a 6th in Overall; and Pat Coomes with a 6th in Men 6 Jumping.

The 2018 Nationals has been awarded to Mystic Lakes in Maize, Kansas. The Nationals will return to West Palm Beach in 2019 and 2020.

07/27/17

Notes from the 2017 Southern Regionals

The Southern Regionals was held this past week at Lymanland Lake, starting July 19 and ending July 23. Around 200 skiers from the seven states of the Southern Region competed in the 5-day event.

It’s safe to say that, as a team, the skiers from our state of Kentucky had a historic and unprecedented performance, one unlike anything in recent memory. While total skiers and total pulls were once again down from the previous year, Kentucky continued to make a strong presence – 18 total skiers – close to our largest-ever contingent.

There were so many outstanding performances, it’s impossible to single out individual performances for commentary without the risk of leaving out others that were equally deserving. So I’ll just list the individual winners and placements at the end of this article. In addition, many of these performers can be viewed in the “2017 Southern Regionals in Pictures” feature adjacent to this article.

However, there are some highlights that just have to be noted!

Team Kentucky collected 8 gold medals, probably the most ever. In addition, we just missed out on two others in high profile slalom run-offs for first place.

Our team collected 30 total medals, also undoubtedly a state record – a phenomenal performance by the small “Northern Kingdom” of the Southern Region.

Our junior skiers placed two of the seven skiers on the Southern Region Junior All-Star team – Austin Collins and Kassidy Hawkins.

Our senior troops (Division 5 and up) collected 11 total medals, tying our juniors, who had 11 total medals. The other 8 were collected by those middle-aged skiers in Divisions Men/Women 1-4. So Kentucky had excellent representation and performances across the board age-wise.

Individual winners were:

Lake Jones – Boys 2 Slalom – Lake became the youngest Kentucky skier to medal, and it was golden!

Josh Kelley – Men 1 Slalom – First Kentucky skier in memory to take first in Men 1.

Carl Marquess – Men 6 Tricks – Second consecutive for Carl.

Pat Coomes – Men 6 Jump – Pat beat some of the biggest names in jumping to take gold.

Errol Bryant – Men 9 Slalom, Tricks, and Overall – Errol scored a “triple” in claiming first places in all three categories for Men 9.

Other placements for medals (top 5) were:

Kassidy Hawkins – Girls 3 – 2nd in Slalom, 5th in Jump, 3rd Overall

Austin Collins – Boy 3 – 5th in Tricks, 2nd Overall

Garnet Fowler – Boys 3 – 4th in Slalom; 4th in Jump, 4th Overall

Jackson Hawes – Men 1 – 4th in Tricks (first-ever Regionals medal)

Josh Kelley – Men 1 – 3rd in Jump, 4th Overall

Leland Rouse – Men 2 – 3rd in Jump; 3rd in Tricks; 3rd Overall

Eric Kelley – Men 4 – 2nd in Slalom

Kyle Jones - Masters Men - 4th in Slalom

Pam Guthrie – Women 6 – 4th in Slalom

Carl Marquess – Men 6 – 4th Overall

Pat Coomes – Men 6 – 5th Overall

Dave Keller – Men 7 – 2nd in Tricks; 4th in Slalom; 2nd Overall

Bob Harris – Men 7 – 5th in Slalom (first-ever Regionals medal)

Truly an outstanding team effort!

Go, Kentucky!!

2017 Regionals

KENTUCKY SKIERS ON WAY TO HISTORIC SOUTHERN REGIONALS PERFORMANCE!!

Click on picture for slideshow with description

07/18/17

Patriot Lake Steps on To the Tournament Scene​

On Saturday, July 15th, Patriot Lake became the fourth active tournament site in the state of Kentucky, hosting its first-ever sanctioned competition. Eric Kelley and his crew didn’t just step into the tournament scene with your basic competition – they went big! The tournament was held as a Class “L” Record Capability tournament for slalom (Class “C” for tricks and jump), and there were a ton of top level slalom skiers in attendance.

Patriot Lake is a gorgeous skiing venue, well protected from wind from virtually every direction. Old-growth trees line the sharply sloping terrain on the sides, and the ends are protected by bends in the valley where the lake lies. Saturday was no exception, as excellent weather prevailed and water conditions were virtually perfect all day. The tournament featured about 90 minutes of tricking at the start and an hour or so of jumping at the end, sandwiched around seven-plus hours of slalom.

Some noteworthy performances by Kentucky skiers:

Lake Jones nearly matched his state record in Boys 2 Slalom, running 2 @ 35 off – only two buoys off the record.

Austin Collins had PB’s in all three events and overall – 2180 in tricks, 2 ½ @ 32 off in slalom, and a 139-foot boomer in jumping. His 2608 overall total was less than 100 points off his Uncle Tyler’s state record.

Saylor Davidson had successive PB’s in jumping with 81 and 82 feet distances on her first two jumps.

Josh Kelley had the longest jump of the tournament, a very respectable 147-foot leap on his first jump.

Tournament “boss” Eric Kelley performed well in slalom, skiing into 39 ½ off in both of his slalom rounds, 2 ½ @ 39 off being his best.

Nick Roshelli had a PB in slalom with 2 @ 35 off in the third round of Men 1 slalom.

Gary Gambrel had the top trick run of the day with a score of 3140 points.

Leon Leonard and Dave Keller had slalom scores that would make them competitive in Men 7 at the Regionals, Dave running 5 @ 32 off in the first round, and Leon topping that in Round 3 with 1 ½ @ 35 off.

Errol Bryant had his best-of-the-year slalom performance, scoring 1 buoy @ 32 off in Men 9.

Kyle Jones continued his excellent slalom skiing with a day’s best of 3 ½ @ 39 off.

A grand salute goes out to Eric, Danita, and associates for their preparation in getting ready for this first competition at Patriot Lake. Also, a big thanks to Chief Judge Kirby Whetsel, Chief Scorer Cathy Burkhead, Chief Driver Tim McKune, Tech Controller Bob Harris, and all of the Appointed (Senior and Regular) Judges for making a Record capability tournament possible.

07/12/17

2017 State Championships

Outstanding Conditions, Outstanding Performances

The state tournament weekend started out somewhat less than auspicious. The Friday Junior Clinic was plagued by high winds, and wicked thunderstorms moved through the area Friday evening. However, this turned out to be simply a grand introduction to one of the best weekends of weather and water conditions in memory for a state championships. Near-perfect conditions prevailed for Saturday and Sunday at Stillwater Lake, home of this year’s state competition. The result was some of the best skiing ever seen in this annual competition!

When the waters had settled after completion of Sunday’s second round, five new state records had been established – four in slalom, one in tricks. One of the best slalom performances ever on Kentucky waters by a female skier (albeit by a non-resident skier) had been witnessed. And performances across the board were generally “out the roof” by pretty much every skier who strapped on one or two skis – particularly in the slalom event!

New State Championship records were set by:

Lake Jones – Boys 2 Slalom – 94 buoys (4 @ 35 off)

This crushed the old record of 91 buoys jointly held by Tyler Collins and Andrew Streater!

Josh Kelley – Men 1 Slalom – 104.5 buoys (2.5 @ 38 off)

Again, the old record of 101 buoys (Ryan Harris) was shattered!

Kyle Jones – Men 4 Slalom – 104.5 buoys (2.5 @ 39 off)

This edged out the old record of 104 buoys set by Kyle in 2015, which had been tied by Eric Kelley in the same round of competition on Saturday.

Joe Duff – Men 10 Slalom – 1 buoy

The most significant aspect of this record is that Joe became the first Men 10 skier
ever in a state competition held in Kentucky!

Errol Bryant – Men 9 Tricks – 1150 points

Errol upped his own record by a whopping 450 points (old record, 700 points) set at the 2016 state championships.

Event and overall winners (in addition to those noted above) were as follows:

Troy Fowler – Boys 2 – Tricks/Jump/Overall

Austin Collins – Boys 3 – Tricks/Jump/Overall

Saylor Davidson – Girls 3 – Slalom/Tricks/Jump/Overall

Jackson Hawes – Men 1 – Tricks

Josh Kelley – Men 1 – Slalom/Jump

Gary Gambrel – Men 5 – Slalom/Tricks

Mark Coomes – Men 6 – Slalom

Carl Marquess – Men 6 – Tricks/Overall

Pat Coomes – Men 6 -- Jump

Bob Harris – Men 7 – Slalom

Dave Keller - Men 7 - Trick/Overall

Errol Bryant – Men 9 – Slalom/Tricks

Lauren Harris – Women 1 – Slalom/Tricks/ Jump/Overall

Noteworthy in the above were clean sweeps by Saylor Davidson, Lauren Harris, and Errol Bryant in their respective divisions!

Other noteworthy observations from the tournament included:

The outstanding skiing was noted above. Just how outstanding was it? Consider this:

Eleven slalom skiers skied into 35 off.

Of those eleven, four skied into 38 off.

Of those four,
three skied into 39 ½ off!!

Sensational slalom skiing!

Austin Collins landed the only flip of the tournament, a back flip in the second round.

Austin also landed the longest jump of the tournament – 135 feet on Sunday.

Saylor Davidson scored the longest jump by a female skier – 81 feet on Sunday (a “PB” for Saylor, by the way)

Carl Marquess had the high scoring trick run in the tournament by a state skier, 2590 points on Sunday. Not Carl’s best, but he’ll take it!

The highest scoring trick run of the tournament was by Elizabeth Fowler (say what?!) at 2660 points. Elizabeth, who could easily have slipped in as a state skier but acknowledged her current residence in Ohio, has always been known for her stellar slalom, but she’s turned into quite the tricker over the past couple of years!

And that “best performance ever on Kentucky waters by a female skier?” Well, that was by Samantha Dumala, a non-resident who just happened to be “hanging” with Ryan and the Harrises last weekend, and ran 3 ½ @ 39 ½ off on Sunday! WOW!!

What a great state championships! The numbers were down a bit, but the quality of performances certainly was not! Congratulations to the Stillwater Ski Club for hosting a superb event, and thanks to all of our officials and other volunteers who made this competition possible.

PRESS RELEASE

DATELINE: Axis, AL

June 26, 2017

Hawkins Places Third in U. S. Junior Open

The 17th U. S. Junior Open was held on June 24th & 25th at Ski Chaste Lake in Axis, AL. Top juniors in the world competed, by invitation only, for titles and placement in slalom, tricks, and jump. Two Kentucky skiers, both members of the Kentucky Lake Ski Nuts, were among those participating.

Kassidy Hawkins, skiing in the Junior Women slalom event, made the podium in third place. Hawkins finished the preliminary round as second seed with a run of 1.5 buoys at 38 off. Luisa Jaramillo took first place in the windy final round, followed by Kennedy Hansen and Hawkins.

Austin Collins, competing in the Junior Men jump event, had a solid performance in the preliminaries with a leap of 123, but narrowly missed the finals. Collins finished 6th in the event.

A total of 42 skiers were invited to compete.

PRESS RELEASE

DATELINE: Walton, KY

June 26, 2017

Tournament Cancelled Due to High Water

The Cruises Creek Pick-n-Choose, scheduled for June 24th, had to be cancelled due to high water.

Heavy rains on the Friday preceding the scheduled event caused flooding of the lake, making it impossible for the Cruises Creek Ski Club to proceed with the event.

There are no plans to reschedule the event at this time.

06/29/17

2017 Kentucky Lake Open

With a terrific weekend of near-perfect water conditions at Twin Oaks Lakes in Paducah, KY, several excellent skiing performances were recorded at the 43rd Kentucky Lake Open. This year, for the first time ever, the KLO was run as a Class “C & L.” A total of 22 skiers competed.

At the risk of (unintentionally) leaving out some outstanding performances, the following stood out on the final scoreboard:

​

Kassidy Hawkins set a new state record in Girls 3 slalom. She was the only skier in the tournament to clear the 35-off rope length, running one buoy at 38-off in Round 1, which helped move her into the #4 spot in the Girls 3 national standings list in slalom. She also had a PB 3,650 points in tricks.

​

Robert and Troy Fowler, skiing in Boys 2, both had PB’s in slalom – Robert scoring 1 buoy at 34 15-off and Troy rounding 3.5 buoys at 28 15-off. Troy also had a jump PB of 45 feet.

​

Austin Collins set his personal high mark in jumping with a leap of 137 feet. This moved him to #8 on the national standings list for Boys 3 jump.

​

Garrett Stallings, a Tennessee skier, had the high trick run of the tournament with a score of 6,150 points.

The KLO was preceded by the annual 3-day Advanced Juniors Clinic, held for the 11th consecutive year and hosted by the Ski Nuts. The clinic lead instructors were Zane Nicholson and Ric Stallings, and eleven state skiers attended.

Two Kentucky skiers have been selected to compete in the U. S. Junior Open Water Ski Tournament.

Kassidy Hawkins of Paducah and Austin Collins of Murray, both members of the Kentucky Lake Ski Nuts, were selected in their respective strongest events – Hawkins in slalom and Collins in jumping. Hawkins is currently the #4 ranked skier in the U. S. in Girls 3 Slalom, while Collins is ranked #8 in Boys 3 Jumping.

In other significant news involving our junior skiers, Lake Jones of Corbin is currently the #3 ranked skier nationally in Boys 2 Slalom.

Congrats to the outstanding skiing of all of our junior skiers.

06/07/17

Kentucky Advanced Juniors Clinic

Once again, the Kentucky Lake Ski Nuts will be hosting the Kentucky Advanced Juniors Clinic at Twin Oaks Lakes in Paducah, to be held on June 14-16. This will be the 15th year for this 3-day ski school, which was started in 2003 to improve the competitiveness of our state juniors at the regional and national level. Over the 15 years since, Kentucky juniors have moved from an afterthought in our region to one of the most accomplished of any state in the Southern Region.

The clinic will begin at 8 AM Wednesday morning and continue through the end of the day on Friday. Featured instructors this year are Zane Nicholson and Rick and Garrett Stallings. The clinic is essentially free for all state skiers, with participants responsible only for their share of expenses (which are usually defrayed to “pocket change” by supplementary donations of other state skiers which make final costs minimal). Age eligibility includes all skiers through college age (generally set at 21 max if not enrolled in college).

Please contact Bob Harris at 270-210-7552 by either direct phone call or text message if you are planning to attend.

06/07/17

Tee Shirts for Kentucky State Championships

All - For this year's Kentucky State tournament, we will be doing tee shirts and taking preorders While we might buy a few extras, the best way to guarantee to get what you want is to preorder. Shirts will be available in short sleeve and long sleeve, and in three colors: light gray, white, and pale pink. All three colors are available in both long and short sleeve. Sizes will be adult small through 3XL. My intention on prices are $12 for short sleeve and $15 for long sleeve, but I need to order a decent quantity to get the cost down to be able to do that. So, order several so I can hit those prices! These will be high quality Gildan 5.3 oz shirts. Please call, text or email Jim Roshelli at the contact info below to order, and specify size, color, and sleeve length. Deadline to preorder is Monday June 19th. I will bring them to the tournament in Eminence, which is Saturday/Sunday July 8th & 9th.

Jim Roshelli

6211 Perrin Drive

Crestwood, Ky. 40014

jimroshelli@gmail.com

cell 502-291-4669

06/06/17

2016 Award Nominations

We are approaching the deadline for nominations for the “Best of 2016!” for the state of Kentucky. Joy reminded me yesterday that the winners will have to be determined within the next week or so, in order for her to get plaques made and customized.

If you have someone you would like to nominate, remember the following categories:

Junior Skier of the Year

Skier of the Year

Member of the Year

Kentucky Water Ski Hall of Fame

All of the above are awarded each year with the exception of the Hall of Fame, which is elected only as the membership feels a fellow state skier/official becomes worthy of this award, by way of accomplishments over a period of time. For additional descriptive information on the above awards, please refer to the state website.

If you wish to nominate someone in any of the above categories, please send along a short biography of accomplishments that would make that person worthy of the award. Final determination will be made by vote of the KWSF board members.

Thanks, and keep on skiin’ !!

06/06/17

Stillwater Lake Season Kick Off

Stillwater Lake kicked off the Kentucky ski season on June 3rd with its annual Summer's Here 3 round slalom tournament. Numbers were low, (14) but met expectations. Many skiers commented on their lack of water time up to this point, due to an unusual number of windy days thus far this Spring. Unfortunately, the performances for most skiers supported their assertions. Thirty-five off was only run twice, and that by Kyle Jones. Lake Jones,despite being early in the season, is getting close to the B2 record that he currently holds jointly with Austin Collins. Joe Duff is starting out the season with plans to hit several tournaments this season. John Harris tookadvantage of the ZBS rule and shortened to 22 off, under max, all three rounds. The truly bright spot was Lauren Harris, recently graduated from Florida Southern and skiing in KY regularly again. Lauren was able to skiup to her average by running 1 and, later, 2 buoys at 35 off.

Special thanks to the Paducah gang for bringing their spanking new Malibu, and the Schmitts for bringing their MC for us to use.

Leon

05/01/17

Tournament - June 3

The Stillwater Lake Club will be hosting its first tournament of the summer, and the first in Kentucky this season -- the "Summer's Here Slalom" -- on June 3rd at Stillwater Lake in Eminence. This tournament is three rounds,slalom only, and entry fee is $70. First-time tournament skiers will receive free entry. The club will be taking 30 entries max. For additional information, contact Leon Leonard at (502) 845-2850 or e-mail atleon1989@bellsouth.net .

Other tournaments in Kentucky scheduled for June are the "43rd Kentucky Lake Open" on June 17th and 18th, and the "Cruises Creek Pick N Choose" on June 24th. This year's KLO will be a Class "C & L" event, pick and choose, with10 pulls max, and will follow the three-day Advanced Juniors Clinic held at Twin Oaks Lakes. The Cruises Creek tournament is a 3-round pick and choose, six pulls max. More information for all three of these tournaments can be found on-line at USA Water Skiing, and the latter two are both listed in the paper copy of the Regional Guide.

Good skiing to all,

Joe Burkhead, President

02/15/17

USA Water Ski National Junior Development Team

Once again, Austin Collins of Murray, Boys 3 overall skier from Murray, a member of the Kentucky Lake Ski Nuts, has been named as a member of the USA Water Ski National Junior Development Team. This is the secondconsecutive year for Collins to be included with this elite group of 24 male and female skiers from across the country. Collins is the only skier from Kentucky on the development team, and one of five skiers fromthe AWSA Southern Region to be so named.

02/10/17

WATER SKIING “STATE OF THE STATE”

Well, everyone, winter seems to be just about over the hump (Have we really had a winter in Kentucky?). The long range forecast shows the rest of February projected to be above average in Kentucky, after a very cold day today (February 9). Not sure what OUR groundhog saw, but it must have been cloudy that day! In any case, it’s time to start thinking about water skiing, at least a little bit.

Following are some random notes concerning water skiing in the upcoming season:

Patriot Lake near Bowling Green (Eric Kelley and company) is planning to host its first-ever sanctioned tournament this summer – scheduled for July 15th. It will be a 3-round, 3-event competition.

There are currently seven tournaments that have been sanctioned in our state for the 2017 season.

The Kentucky Lake Ski Nuts will once again host the Kentucky Advanced Juniors Clinic, June 14-16, at Twin Oaks Lakes in Paducah. There will also be at least one additional clinic for juniors, the one-cay clinic held on Friday, July 7th, in conjunction with the state championships.

The Ski Nuts will host a Safety and Drivers (drivers, on water portion only) on Friday, June 20th, in advance of the 42nd Kentucky Lake Open, and during the Advanced Juniors Clinic.

The 2017 Southern Regionals will be held at Lymanland in Tuscaloosa, AL for the second consecutive year. Dates are July 19-23.

The 2017 Nationals will once again return to San Marcos River Ranch near San Marcos, TX. Dates are August 9-12.

A site for the 2018 Nationals has already been selected. Nationals will be held at a new (to Nationals) site – Mystic Lakes in Maize, KS August 8-11. Mystic Lakes is a two-lake site, and Maize is about 20 minutes west of the Wichita airport along I-285.

The ongoing battle between the Ski Nuts and the Asian Carp (see additional article) will hopefully draw to a close this weekend, as we plan to sterilize the north lake on Saturday (February 11th). We completed work on the south lake the weekend before Christmas, then took a few weeks to recover before tackling the second lake.

There are a few proposed rules changes for 2017 that some of us will be interested in. Probably the most significant (at present) is an extension from last year of the rule for juniors which allowed juniors to make progressive line shortenings below max speed, and increase their scores at below max speeds.
Rumor has it that this rule has been approved at the national level for all divisions. This may make for an interesting challenge for scorers and judges.

An additional rule modification, along the same lines, is that a skier may ski above the maximum division speed and score a higher buoy count at a given line length than a skier at the standard division speed. Example: In Men 3, a skier skiing 6 at 36 mph/28 off would have the same score as a skier skiing 6 at 34 mph/32 off. Hmmmmmmm ------ .

If anyone else has any additional news you’d like included in the above, please let me know, and we’ll add it to the list.

Lastly, I need NOMINEES FOR SKIER PERSONALITY OF THE MONTH !!!! I’m out of names right now, so if you give me the info on somebody, they’ll most likely become Ski Personality for February

Stay warm everybody,

Joe B

02/10/17

“CARP WARS”

Many of you already know about the battle the Ski Nuts have been waging against the Asian Carp invasion of Twin Oaks Lakes. This has been an expensive, time consuming, and exhausting war against these evil critters – starting in October and continuing through mid-February. We hope to bring this to a conclusion the weekend of February 11-12.

Asian Carp infested Twin Oaks during the 2011 flood, when the Ohio and Clarks rivers backed up into our ski lakes. The carp had a wide-open shot into the lakes for several weeks, and they obviously took full advantage. The spawning habits of Asian Carp direct them to migrate upstream into tributaries to lay their eggs (an adult female can drop up to one million eggs in a single batch), and we became an upstream tributary to the carp. When they got to the lakes, they hit the end of the line, so they stayed put in massive numbers.

At the time, we were not aware of this, but it became evident over the last couple of years as dangerous jumps by silver Asians became more and more frequent. This past summer, one of our skiers (Kassidy Hawkins) was hit while trick skiing, and suffered a severe leg bruise. That was the final straw, and we decided we had to take drastic action to completely rid the lakes of Asians.

A little info about Asian Carp. There are four types of Asian Carp which are prevalent in U.S. waters – silver, bighead, grass, and black. The first two are the ones that have become extremely problematic to ecosystems, and the silver carp are the ones with the high jumping ability (as high as 8 to 10 feet above the surface) which have caused numerous, and sometimes severe injuries. These fish, which are strictly vegetarian, will wipe out a lake or pond by simply outcompeting every other species for base level food (vegetation), thus starving out other species starting with the bottom of the food chain and going all the way up to primary game fish.

After evaluating several options for exterminating the fish from Twin Oaks, we decided to pump the lakes down to virtually empty – one lake at a time. Then we’d seine out all the fish we possibly could, to salvage the game fish and eliminate the carp, and sterilize the remaining water to get 100% eradication. There is a significant market for the carp here in western Kentucky, with a processing plant in Wickliffe (30 miles west) that would take all we could ship, so we planned to capture and sell. We had no idea how many fish we’d catch, but the best “WAG” was that we might pull out 10,000 pounds from the two lakes. Geez, were we ever wrong!!

The chronology of events has gone something like this:

Pat Coomes secured a 16-inch agricultural pump (tractor driven) in early October from a farmer friend in Owensboro, and we put it in the lakes and started pumping in early November. With the larger of two tractors we had available, we were able to pump about 5,000 gpm (seven million gallons per day – enough to fill 140 Olympic-size swimming pools), dropping the lake level over a half-foot per day. Fortunately, we were in a dry period, we started out with a relatively low lake level, and we did not have to deal with any run-off for several weeks.

We knew the north and south lakes would completely divide at about four feet down, which they did. At this point, we used heavy equipment to move dirt and raise the dividing levee on the west end to completely separate the two lakes at normal summer pool, so we could deal with one lake at a time.

We continued to pump from the south lake (the larger lake, takes all run-off water) until we got it as low as possible with the big pump, then switched to four smaller (3-inch) pumps to continue pumping down to large “puddles.” We ended up with three distinct basins on the south side, each having to be dealt with separately.

Now it was time to seine fish, and find out what was really in the lake. A friend of the Ski Nuts secured a 200-foot commercial net, and we set up to seine the southeast basin (the one in front of the Burkhead home) on December 3rd. This basin collected about one-fourth of the total area of the two lakes. Little could we have imagined what we’d find, expecting maybe two to three thousand pounds of carp, and a lot of game fish. As we dragged the net the length of the basin, which now had a max depth of around 12 inches, we could see the frenzy of fish start to increase. By the time we were within 50 feet of the end of the basin, the net had collected a churning cauldron of madness! Pulling slowly from each bank with a tractor on one end and a 4WD large pick-up on the other, we started to bog down with the truck. Then one entire end of the net gave way and released half our catch back into the basin!

We were able to drag about half the catch out onto “dry” lake bottom before everything gave way (dry lake bottom was actually muck up to 3 feet deep). As you can see from the pictures, our catch was a little larger than expected!! We loaded out 5,000 lbs of carp to market before we pooped out (dragged the carp to tractor buckets positioned on solid surface, dumped buckets into large hoppers), and left at least 3,000 lbs on the bank. AND we had lost an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 lbs back into the basin. AND this basin represented only about one-fourth of the lakes area/volume. Based on these numbers, we now estimate we were “housing” around 60,000 lbs of Asian Carp in our 32 acres of lakes.

The largest carp we caught that first day was a bighead, around 110 lbs (see picture). We caught dozens of carp, silver and bighead, over 50 lbs, hundreds over 20-30 lbs.

We had virtually no success in saving game fish on this first attempt. They were just too buried in the carp! The “half net” of fish resulted in a pile about 100 feet long, 20 feet wide, and up to two feet deep! Game fish simply got buried in the mass. (again, see picture)

We went through the same process on December 17th with the jump basin (area of the ski jump) and the crescent basin (around the southwest island), except we did not even try to salvage game fish. We were faced with heavy rains that evening and we knew we had to get finished that day or suffer several weeks of setback. We were successful, and the south lake is now 100% clear of Asian Carp. Rain and run-off have already filled it back to nearly two-thirds full.

We’re now in the process of finishing the north lake. We could relax a little more with this one as we did not have to worry about run-off flooding us out. Like the south lake, it divided into two major basins and one smaller one. We started pumping down in late January, and have all basins ready to finish off on the weekend of February 11th. We’ll try to seine for game fish the week of February 6th and hope we have better luck salvaging a restock base. We’re dealing with the same problems, however – bottom muck that is as much as 3 feet deep – impossible to work in – so we have to do all seining from the banks, using ropes.

Once we’ve finished the north lake to 100% kill, we’ll cut a connecting (boat) gap through the temporary levee and allow both lakes to refill together. We hope to have this done before the end of February.

Carp Wars – WE WIN!! Or at least we look like we’re in good position to do so by the end of this week.